Wedding banquet: a yield error in the costing sheet and a guest count of 352 against a guarantee of 300
The banquet team at a 250-cover hotel has confirmed a wedding reception for 320 guests at ₹1,150 per plate, against a signed guarantee of 300 covers. The contract bills at the guarantee or actual attendance, whichever is higher, and covers above the guarantee are billed at the same rate when accepted and served. The food cost budget is 28% of selling price. On the morning of the event the chef's costing sheet shows ₹298 per cover at purchase (AP) prices, comfortably inside budget, and he signs it off. At 8 pm, 352 guests have been served and two buffet items are running short with about 60 guests still to come. The kitchen also spent ₹2,400 on emergency dal, rice and paneer to stretch the buffet. While reviewing the sheet afterwards you notice the chicken dish was costed at 180 g of boneless meat at ₹280 per kilogram - the recipe is written in edible-portion (EP) weight, but the 180 g was multiplied straight by the AP rate. The kitchen's recorded yield on boneless chicken is 75%.
1. Is the chef's ₹298 per cover reliable? Recompute the chicken component and the likely true cost per cover.
Read the worked answer
No. It is an AP cost applied to an EP recipe - a unit error, not a price error, and the most common costing mistake in a kitchen.
Chicken: recipe needs 180 g EP per cover. At 75% yield, AP purchase = 180 ÷ 0.75 = 240 g. At ₹280/kg (₹0.28/g): 240 × 0.28 = ₹67.20. The sheet used 180 × 0.28 = ₹50.40, so it understates by ₹16.80 per cover.
Corrected cost: 298 + 16.80 = ₹314.80 per cover, before checking whether paneer, fish and mutton carry the same error - check every EP recipe, not just this one.
The understatement is 16.80 × 352 = ₹5,913.60 of food cost that never appeared on the sheet, plus ₹2,400 of emergency purchases = ₹1,13,209.60 total food cost. Against a ₹322 budget (28% of ₹1,150), the event is inside budget - but by only about ₹7 per cover. That thin margin is the real finding: had the plate price been negotiated at ₹1,000, the same event would run at 31.5% food cost and lose money. Signed-off costing sheets must be checked for AP/EP consistency before the price is agreed, not after the function.
2. What should the hotel bill, and what is the actual food cost percentage?
Read the worked answer
Bill 352 covers × ₹1,150 = ₹4,04,800.
The contract bills the higher of guarantee or actual, and bills covers above the guarantee at the same rate when accepted and served. The extra covers were accepted before service and the kitchen served them, so the charge is earned. The 52 covers above the guarantee are worth 52 × 1,150 = ₹59,800 of revenue.
Food cost percentage: food cost 352 × 314.80 = ₹1,10,809.60, plus ₹2,400 emergency = ₹1,13,209.60. Revenue ₹4,04,800 → 27.97%, just inside the 28% budget.
Test the alternative: billing only the 300 guarantee gives revenue of ₹3,45,000, so food cost becomes 1,13,209.60 ÷ 3,45,000 = 32.8% - the event misses budget purely because of a billing decision, not a purchasing one.
Handle the late notification as a relationship matter, not a food-cost matter: acknowledge in writing that the count came in late, and use a discretionary gesture on the service charge or a return-booking incentive. Give away something that costs a few thousand rupees, not ₹59,800 of earned revenue.
3. Two items are running short at 8 pm with 60 guests still to come through the buffet. What do you do in the next fifteen minutes?
Read the worked answer
Three actions, in parallel:
- Pull the line back. Take roughly 30% of the remaining stock of both short items off the buffet and hold it in the kitchen. Rationing is invisible; an empty chafing dish at 8:15 pm is not.
- Add volume, not substitutes. Re-fire rice, breads and naan and open a staffed live counter - pasta, chaat or a carved item. A hot, busy, staffed counter reads as generosity, while a plain substitute dish reads as a shortfall. It also absorbs the next 60 guests quickly.
- Tell the client first. Quietly inform the family's point of contact that two dishes are being replenished and a live counter has been added for the last hour. Never let the family discover a problem from a guest.
Root cause for the debrief: production was planned at 330 against an actual 352, so about 22 covers were improvised. The fix is procedural - call the client for a final count 24 hours out and again at 4 pm on the day, and hold a 10% buffer in the banquet production sheet for weddings where the count is historically unreliable.